


Oh, Fever

by letterfromathief



Series: you bite your cheeks, you'll put it right [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Break Up, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-18
Updated: 2015-07-18
Packaged: 2018-04-10 00:00:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4369406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/letterfromathief/pseuds/letterfromathief
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>note to self: i miss you terribly;</i> It’s been six months since they saw each other last, and Emma’s not ready to test the waters but she finds herself there anyway, waiting for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Oh, Fever

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [here](http://swanisms.tumblr.com/post/124394841171/oh-fever-1-1).

It’s been awhile since she’s seen him. Her fault, this time. Or all the times. It’s habit, running them off with a cold shoulder or a shouldered hit to the chest should they not get the first hint. Emma doesn’t go for seconds or thirds.

Or at least she doesn’t usually.

Didn’t.

His hair is longer, falling ungracefully over his face, like he’s going for the out of work rock star look. At least, he doesn’t look drugged out.

At least - at least, not until he sees her.

Then, he gets that look he always has when he looks at her, like he’s getting drunk off of her.

God, this was a terrible fucking idea, the kind that’s going to end with her sitting in her car, beating her steering wheel and wanting to scream at herself for being stupid enough to go where she knew he would be, thinking that it’d be alright to see him again. Wanting to scream, but biting her tongue instead because Emma lashes out, she takes hits and she gives them back twofold, but she doesn’t cry, not where anyone might see.

She likes to pretend that she doesn’t have that ability at all, but six months later, she still wakes up in the middle of the night and feels the wetness in the corner of her eyes.

Six months later, and she brings herself within his sights.

And now that he has her, he doesn’t let her go. Not approaching yet, but she knows he will. Things had ended far too badly for him not to.

Killian hadn’t given up without a fight - and he was raring for another one.

“Hey, miss, did you want that drink?” the bartender asks her and she twitches her head just enough to the side that she can still see Killian while acknowledging the bartender’s annoyed question.

“Make it two,” she says.

She doesn’t need to be sober for this. Besides, her car was parked blocks from here. She’d stop for a bag of chips at the convenience store two blocks over, a tub of Ben and Jerry’s at the one three blocks from that, and by that time the alcohol will have burned away enough that she can drive the hell away from here.

And never come the fuck back.

This was a bad idea.

So what if she makes another one, grabs the two shots and makes her way over to him. Better to take the hit before it can take her by surprise.

He takes the drink wordlessly, using one hand to sweep his bangs out of his face while he gulps it down. Emma follows his move and pretends she doesn’t watch the familiar lift of his chest.

“Never expected to see you here, but you’re a creature of habit, aren’t you, Swan?”

The dig is intentional and that makes it all the worse. She doesn’t look into his eyes but her grip on the plastic cup tightens all the same, folding it in on itself.

She shouldn’t have given him the drink. The burn from her one drink isn’t nearly enough to wash over the burn of his words.

“Bad habits,” Emma says.

“As one of those bad habits, I can confirm the truth in your statement,” Killian says.

Emma looks at him, then, and it’s the worst mistake she could’ve made. Worse than this was to begin with, because he doesn’t even look angry. Just looks as hurt as the day she dropped the ring on his desk and said she couldn’t wear it any longer.

“Does it chafe? I can get it resized,” he’d said then, so concerned that she had barely been able to get the words out.

She’d shaken her head and closed her eyes when they started to burn. “No, it fits perfectly.”

She’d thought that was all she needed to say, that he would see in her eyes the words that she didn’t want to give life to. It didn’t have to hurt as much as it did - does, still fucking does despite everything. She’d wanted that. Emma had wanted it to end. It was too much all too fast, and everything had caught up to her and she’d just wanted to wash her hands of it all, starting with the outline of that ring.

It didn’t have to hurt at all.

“I shouldn’t have come here,” she says to him now.

He drops his cup in her empty one. Their hands don’t even brush. “Well, you did, and now you have to deal with it.”

 _Deal with me_.

“I can leave,” she insists. “You can enjoy your night.”

And here comes the next blow, the fight she knew that would come.

He snaps like a rubber band, a foot stepped into her as he speaks. “Do you really believe that? Emma, do you really think I can enjoy any night when you’ve -”

“Please don’t do this,” Emma says.

Maybe if she waves the white flag he’ll let her be. Oh, forget the bag of chips. Forget the Ben and Jerry’s. She’s going to sprint out the door and she won’t stop running until she slams into her car door.

At this point, if she gets pulled over for a sobriety check, it’ll be better than standing here and listening to this. Listening to him beg for what she’ll never be able to give.

He knows it, too, and that makes it all the fucking worse because he steps out of her space, giving her the distance she so desperately needs.

“I’m sorry,” he says, like he’s the one who said goodbye.

“You don’t have to be,” Emma says.

_It’s me. It’s always been me. It always is._

She remembers throwing those words in his face. Remembers the moment, he kissed her tears away and said, “Of course, Emma, it’s you. It’s always been you.”

She remembers pulling away. _Not me._

The memory fades where they all do, in the back of her mind where they wait to reemerge when she least wants them to.

When he starts to speak again, she actually finds it in herself to look at him.

“Sometimes I think if I say it enough, if I’m sincere enough in my apologies, that it’ll mend everything I’ve ever broken. Including that damned porcelain bird.”

Emma laughs and forget whatever the fuck she said about not being able to cry because she’s already letting the tears fall, not even trying to stop them when she says, “Mary Margaret would like that.”

It was how they met after all. Him knocking Mary Margaret’s favorite bird off her counter because he couldn’t stop staring at Emma and tried to grab the box of cupcakes without looking.

That thing she said about first hints and second hits?

Killian had plowed right over them the day he started Mary Margaret’s favorite collection of bird statuettes, bringing in a new one every day.

He didn’t ask anything of Emma for them. It wasn’t like that, and that’s probably why she’d finally started to answer his questions.

_“Emma Swan.”_

_“No, I don’t work here. I just keep her in business.”_

_“Bailbondsperson.”_

_“I had a date. He bailed.”_

He’d liked that response the most, laughing so hard at her terrible pun that she thought he would choke on the vanilla bean and chai cupcake that Mary Margaret had baked especially for him to try, her not so subtle attempt to keep him coming back.

She hadn’t made any since.

She shakes away the memory again. “You didn’t break anything,” Emma says.

Killian sighs and dips his hand into his pocket. “You can say it as many times as you like, but that doesn’t make it true. I broke something.”

“Sometimes things just don’t work,” Emma says.

“And then they do,” he says.

Another blow, and she was stupid (isn’t she always?) to think that he was done fighting.

“Would you share another drink with me?” he asks.

“That’s a bad idea, Killian.”

He snaps again. “Well, wasn’t all of this?”

She knows he doesn’t mean their whole relationship because he isn’t like that. She’s the one that regrets love. The only thing he regrets is when it’s lost.

Emma’s the only one thinking of the beginning - of when she first kissed him and how she shouldn’t have let him goad her into giving that piece of herself away, the piece that liked him so much that she’d been looking for an excuse to do it for months.

The perfect excuse to fly head over heels and not worry about hitting the ground.

She should have worried, but it’s too late for that now.

And it’s too late for a lot of things. She moves back and replies, “It was and now I’m going to fix it. I’m going to leave and you’re not going to follow me, and we’re going to pretend this never happened.”

“Haven’t we been doing that for months? When do we stop pretending?” he asks.

“I’m moving,” is what she says to that. “Out of New York.”

He stares at her blankly. There’s the pounding of the music, some heavy bass trying to blow out all the speakers, and then there’s the pounding of her heart when he twists on his heel and marches through the crowd.

It’s the perfect time for an escape, to fix her mistake and let them go their separate ways for good.

To fix her mistake for good.

She bites her lip and follows him. When they hit the doors, she follows him right out of them too and down the street, heading down the familiar path to the small church park, the one they used to sit at for hours while they sobered up.

“God, I hate clubs,” she’d say.

“I do too, but alas they ask for seafood and I must deliver.”

“I’m not a lass, Killian.”

God, her jokes were stupid, but he would laugh all the same.

He doesn’t laugh now when he sits down on the bench. “You’re moving,” he says. There’s no stiffness to his form, only a defeated slump to his shoulders.

“It’s better this way alright. You can go back to your life and I can go back to…”

“Chasing down criminals...or running away?” Killian looks out in the distance. “I suppose you can do both at the same time.”

He’s quiet for a long while. Sitting down next to him seems like a terrible idea that Emma isn’t going to even bother considering more than she is right now. There’s space for her to fit right in to him, just like she used to.

“You know, if you could give me a proper answer for why you left me, I wouldn’t be so...leaving is not going to help me, Emma. If it did, I wouldn’t look like this, now would I?”

He throws his hands up, begging her to look at him. She does. Emma looks him all over, from his favorite boots to his loose laundry day jeans and white t-shirt, his leather jacket thrown over it all.

And then she looks a little higher, at the downward tilt of his mouth, the not-so neat moustache and the hair that’s fallen across his face again. He doesn’t bother to push it back, even when she looks him in his eyes.

She glances away.

“The shaggy hair isn't a bad look. I’m sure you can…”

“Don’t finish the sentence, Emma.”

Snapping would’ve been easier to ignore. This quiet tone not so much. It makes her feel quiet and the words swell up in her throat.

Emma panics when the memory hits, hands clenching at her sides when she remembers trying to kiss him goodbye and the words not coming. The words she’d said to him in a hazy rush after he’d been at sea for a day too long, the trip from Maine taking a bit more time than expected and Emma worrying despite herself that there was something more. Killers lurked everywhere. The cops at her favorite precinct had shared enough stories for her to have a healthy sense of fear. Her past dating history had been enough to have her on the verge of wearing holes into the sleeves of her sweater by the time he came in the door and she’d spilled out the words only seconds after his, “Emma, were you _really_ standing by the door, waiting for me? Now, that’s dedication.”

She remembers all the times after. More kisses goodbye and “I love you’s” that she’d been unable to return. And then the ring. The ring he’d given to her - “It’s not a proposal, really,” he’d said and of course it was, all of his “I just want you to have its” aside, and it didn’t matter that she couldn’t say the words because when he slid it on her finger, she felt it in her heart and that’s what mattered - even when she also felt the fear struggle its way past the words that just would not come.

It stopped mattering the longer the ring wore on her finger, the longer he smiled at her and wished her luck on catching the latest “sodding jackass,” the longer his fingers lingered on her skin and the fear iced over the love until it felt like it was never there at all.

“I didn’t mean for you to choke up completely, love,” he says, tearing her away from that mounting urge to run as far and fast as she can.

The “love” falls so easily from his lips and there are the tears again. This time he doesn’t pretend not to notice. _When do we stop pretending?_ Right now, apparently.

“Don’t,” she says when he jumps to his feet and takes her by the hand she’s trying to rub her tears away with.

“You can’t do that and expect me to just sit here and watch,” he says while leading her to the bench.

Emma would never expect him to just leave her to it. He is as predictable as she, in a way. A creature of habit, and comforting her was always one of them. Touching his fingers to the bruises on her cheeks, whispering away the bruises on her heart.

“I’m fine,” she says because she’s really fucking not and it’s easier to believe the lie when she says it out loud.

“So am I,” Killian says. Teasing without the humor.

He doesn’t brush her tears away and it’s a strange, twisted, fucked up part of herself that wishes he would. Why add more pain into the mix? It wasn’t supposed to hurt goddammit. He wants a proper answer, well she can give it, because it wasn’t supposed to hurt, at least not for as long as it has. She’d thought she hadn’t dived so deep that she couldn’t pull herself out of his depths.

She’d thought so much, and yet she hadn’t thought at all when she’d given him his apartment key back and told him not to bother giving hers.

“I’ve already changed the locks.”

It was auto-pilot that drove her on, something she was used to, but god, it wasn’t supposed to hurt like it did, like it does. He wasn’t Neal. For fucks sake, Killian hadn’t left her pregnant in jail, she’d left _him_ before he could get that far.

There. How’s that for a fucking proper answer?

She’d left him because she was as terrified as she feels right now, like she feels every night that she wakes up alone. Comes in at 3am with bruises on her knees and a check in her pocket, another sodding jackass put behind bars, and Emma placing herself behind her own, locking the door tight and pushing a chair against it just in case. She’d changed the locks but with the chair there, she can always remind herself in those early morning hours that he isn’t going to come in with a cup of Starbucks, singing brightly like her own personal rooster.

“You’re moving,” he says slowly, dragging her out of her own head.

She isn’t sure if that’s better or not.

“Where?”

‘Wherever you’re not’ is not a good answer. She should be truthful. She can be, mostly. Yet, the words die in her throat. The important ones always seem to.

After a long silence, he sighs. “I guess that’s another thing I don’t get to know, then. I’ll just add it to the list.”

“I should go,” she says.

“And miss the pleasure of my company?” he says. He must be smiling, she can hear it in the uptick in his voice, but it’s that smile she hates. The one that doesn’t mean a damn thing.

She doesn’t mean to beg. She does anyway.

“Come on, Killian.”

He turns into her more than he is already. Their knees touch, and Emma refuses to jerk back, so his heat bleeds into hers.

“Why did you come here tonight? Can you answer this at least?” he asks.

The lies may be easier to believe when said out loud, but the truths hit harder when spoken. “I wanted to see you,” she admits quietly.

“ _Really_?”

She forces out the rest. “I wanted to see whether I could see you and be okay, and as you can see, I’m not, so -”

“So, that’s why you’re moving. It’s nice to know I was right. You’re running away.”

The fury doesn’t take her aback the way it probably should.

“I’m giving us the space we need to be okay,” she explains calmly. The tears are sort of dry on her cheeks. That’s something to be grateful for even while he fumes beside her.

“I don’t need space to be okay.”

“I do.”

She can’t even tell whether that’s a truth or a lie, every emotion too tangled together for her to follow the threads down to their source. Do you still want him, his arm wrapped around you while he tells you of his “pirate” days? Or is it better to visit Mary Margaret’s bakery knowing that he won’t be there waiting?

“You - Emma, just listen to me for a moment. You didn’t even give me that before. Just let me have that now.”

Deliberately casual, she says, “Go for it.”

But she can’t meet his gaze so the words just fall flat.

“I noticed. I saw that you were struggling and maybe if I had gone with my damn gut and confronted you about it we wouldn’t be here right now. But even after your smile started to dim, when you let me put that ring on your finger, you smiled so bright that I thought that I was doing what was best in giving you your space. So, when I tell you I’m sorry, I am truly sorry, Emma. I shouldn’t have let it get that far.”

He’d _seen_ it.

It wasn’t supposed to hurt, she thinks desperately while she digs her fingers into the edge of the bench and ignores the feeling of his gaze.

But he’d seen it, and it hurts more than it ever did.

“So, I’m going to do what I should’ve done before and tell you that whatever it is you don’t think you can tell me, whatever it is that’s troubling you, I’m here. Even if...even if you fly halfway around the world and I can barely hear you over the static, I’ll listen.”

“I can’t,” she says because that was the problem. She _can’t_ tell him.

“You’re scared,” he accuses.

“I’m always scared.”

This truth hits hard, a punch to the gut that the arm he snakes around her doesn’t help at all.

“That’s okay,” he says, petting her hair. “It’s alright, Emma.”

It’s not okay. It’s not alright, but like this it sort of feels like it could be, maybe. Her heart has that pitter-patter to it that she recognizes, the one that wants to tell him, to say those words that she’s so scared will come back to haunt her.

She clings to that feeling for as long as she can, until she’s half dozing on his shoulder and he’s fully asleep on hers, and the words slip out of her mouth as easy as they once did, her forehead pressed to his while she repeated it again, just so she could make sure he knew.

“I love you,” she whispers.

He doesn’t hear, she knows that, but she does, and that isn’t enough, but it could be enough to keep them like this for a little longer. Just until the sunrise.

She misses being able to see it with him.


End file.
